Monday, July 6, 2009

Using Full Recount Potential, Part II

Last time, we talked about the straight healing meters and their expanded properties. Now, it's time to talk about the less obvious meters that play an important role in figuring out what is going right and what is going wrong during any boss pull.

Recount Meter #2: Healed By Meter (Expanded)This meters is most effective for judging the effectiveness of tanking assignments. This is only effective as an expanded meter. You click on a name on the meter, and up will pop your friendly window with another pie chart detailing where this person's heals have come from, and in what amount. Highlighting a name in the list will show just what skills were responsible for the heals, in order from most to least healing done.

This chart should tell you who is healing your tanks, plain and simple. If the healers you assigned to the tanks are not on the top of the charts, you have an obvious problem to be addressed. The same goes for if you have two healers assigned to a tank and three healers doing a relatively equal amount of healing. Why is that healer switching to the tank? If their tank is going down, they need to be told not to split their focus. If their tank is staying up but this tank with three healers has been struggling to stay alive, something may be wrong with your tank.

Recount Meter #3: Overhealing (Expanded)It's time to look at Overhealing, that fickle, weird little meter. What can it actually tell you? By itself...not much. Since downranking went the way of the dodo, everyone has to use their max heal when healing anyone, and healing for less is a waste of time and mana. However, there are certain rules about overhealing; namely, your Druids should have a low amount of overheal. This isn't due to whether or not they have a large amount of skill, but rather because of HoT mechanics. If your Druids are spamming Regrowth and Healing Touch and Nourish a lot, their overheal will skyrocket.

Overheal meters have to be taken with a grain of salt. With your Paladins casting Holy Light as much as possible, they'll get overheal from crits, the AoE portion, and Beacon of Light. With a lot of Druids, other healers can be pushed off by HoT ticks. Fights that have to mitigate intense amounts of damage tend to have high overheal due to healers frantically trying to mitigate damage preemptively. While in BC these meters could tell you which of your healers had more skill with downranking, now they are probably the least important of meters.

Recount Meter #4: Dispell Meter (Expanded)This meter is one of the best at providing information without being expanded (though expansion is still helpful). After any encounter in which dispelling is a necessary function, looking at this meter will show you two possible things: who is or isn't doing their job, and who is the fastest at reacting to dispelling situations. When your curses are staying on far too long, looking at the meters to see that one druid or mage or spec'd shaman has been doing the majority of the work will put it into perspective. One person cannot get to everything in time with the GCD, even with it reduced by haste and talents. It's time for your other healers (and maybe even your DPS!) to pick up the slack.

Expanding the dispell meter by clicking on names can give even more information. Who is dispelling what? How are they doing it? Mass dispell will get rid of more problems than a single target spell will, and Abolish Poison will cleanse poisons as they are applied (hence why I roll it like a HoT on poison-heavy bosses). Understanding why someone is cornering the market on dispells can also keep you from losing face from berating your other dispellers without cause.

That's all the meters, but we're not done yet. You cannot just look at one meter alone and make decisions. Part III, which is coming soon, will detail how to use all the meters together to make judgments, decisions and adjustments for healing purposes.

On that first attempt, I never decursed. I figured I should just stick to my rotation (my gear was rather awful back then and I wanted to prove my DPS was worthwhile keeping me in the guild) and let the Druid take care of it.

Big mistake.

After we rez, I tell the raid, "Brb, I'm going to install decursive for this attempt." I log out, install decursive, log back in, set it up.

Sapph goes down. I'm the only one decursing. Why?

Well, no one had Frost resist gear. :/ So the Druid and the Holy Priest were spamming heals like mad. The Druid just couldn't keep up with decursing and healing. So I took over and we wiped him out.

Interesting, unrealted fact: the word verification for this comment is "Reouto". Sounds like recount? Anybody? Anybody?

I finally got the chance to sit down and go through this installment, and its still well done! For fights like KT, we look at the interrupts as well, to judge the performance of the classes capable of interrupting!

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The Authors

Bellwether is a level 80 Druid on Dark Iron (PvP - US). She has experience in endgame raids, PvP and arena as a Restoration spec'd Healer. She also has knowledge on many other aspects of the druid class, including the other talent trees. Her alts include a Ret Paladin named Bellbell with a bitchin' attitude, and many ickle alties.Contact Information:E-mail: 4haelz AT gmail DOT comAIM: JuiceboxDaniMSN: bellwetherdani@live.comSubscribe to 4 Haelz!Picture provided by the lovely Phaelia of Resto4Life.

Sannhet is a Level 80 Ret Paladin, Frost DK and perhaps soon Warrior with an attitude and an occasional bone to pick. He loves to debate and hopefully he'll write in here to tell you how awesome he is (he's very awesome). He's been referred to on this blog before as "Button."